38. Freya
38
FREYA
O z lunges for my father.
Fury contorts his face as he slams Maxwell against the wall, his forearm pressed against his upper chest. “Where is she?”
My dad’s tongue flicks over his bottom lip and his eyes cut to me.
Oz drops his phone, and I jolt when it hits the floor. Keeping one arm braced against my dad’s chest, he circles his free hand around his neck. “Where, the fuck, is my sister?” he growls, his fingers squeezing tighter with each word.
Maxwell’s cheeks bulge as he struggles to breathe.
“Oz,” I say, taking a step forward.
“Tell me!” Oz screams, his face inches from Maxwell’s.
River grabs Oz’s shoulder. “Alright, stop. Stop, Oz.”
He doesn’t budge until Jude takes Oz’s other side and the two of them drag him off of my father.
Maxwell bends over at the waist, coughing and spluttering, his hands still cuffed behind his back.
Oz looks like he’s about to go for him again but River steps between them in the narrow corridor. “We need him alive,” he says.
Oz lets out a pained, inhuman sound that has my hairs spiking. He slams his fist into the wall and a picture frame crashes to the floor. Snatching his phone from among the shards of glass, he storms off into the room opposite the kitchen.
River catches Jude’s eye. “Take Maxwell into the kitchen. Get Hannah out of there and check her over for injuries.” He glances over at Eli who watched the whole thing standing in the kitchen doorway. His arms are crossed. His face blank.
“You good?” River asks.
Eli dips his head. He steps aside as Jude leads Maxwell into the kitchen, then follows them in.
Hannah takes his place in the doorway. She’s not even shaking and the look in her eyes tells me her nervous system is far too accustomed to this kind of threat.
I want to reach out and take her hand, but I don’t know how to do that. This woman is supposed to be my mother but I never spent a day of my life with her. I don’t know how to help her, but I can help Oz.
I drop eye contact, leaving Hannah with Jude, and enter the room Oz disappeared into.
It’s a small living room. Oz is sitting on a faded gray sofa, his head buried in his hands. River and my mother follow me inside, but my attention is locked on Oz.
I drop onto the patterned rug between his knees and lift his head. “Hey,” I whisper.
Oz’s green eyes are manic. “I should have answered. I should have answered the phone,” he says. “I shouldn’t have left them without protection.”
I clasp his face in my hands. “This is not your fault,” I say. I know he won’t believe me, but he needs to hear it anyway. “We will find her, Oz.”
Oz grabs my wrists and pulls away from me. A grimace tears at his face as he shakes his head. “He’s not going to tell us where she is.”
My jaw ticks as I clench my teeth. Technically, Oz is right. Every profile of Maxwell suggests he will take his secrets to the grave just to get one up on us, to be the one in control. But I refuse to accept that. Any fear I felt at facing my father again has been replaced with rage. I won’t let him hurt the people I care about. Not again.
I tilt my chin up and lock on to Oz’s eyes. “I will make him tell me.”
I slip the knife out of my boot and stand up. I’m ready to carve my father to fucking pieces to get to Layla but River’s hand circles my arm as I go to pass him.
“We do this the right way,” he says.
I clench my fist and look up at him. “He has Layla.”
River’s eyes are as dark as I feel but his face is firm. “You will never forgive yourself if he succeeds in making you what he’s always wanted you to be.”
My stomach curdles like sour milk. He’s right. Other than the victims my father forced me to cut, I’ve never taken a knife to anyone.
Do I know how to use one? Of course.
Does some part of me feel safer with a knife in my hand? Yes.
But I also feel sick every time I pick one up and I’ve made sure to never cross the line of actually using one.
I poke my tongue into my cheek and work my jaw. Then I flick the knife closed and slip it into the waistband of my jeans. “Fine. We try it your way.”
River nods and lets go of my arm. “Oz, call your parents and the Danville PD, get as much info as they have.” He turns to Hannah, who’s leaning against the wall, watching Oz with a look I can’t read. “Wait here, please,” River says.
Hannah blinks. She gives a small nod before turning back to Oz. She seems distracted, like her mind is elsewhere, but I don’t have time to analyze that right now.
River and I leave the living room and join Eli and Jude in the kitchen.
They’ve sat my father down at the dining table.
Jude sits opposite him while Eli leans against the fridge, his gun hanging loose from his fingertips.
“You’re not going to be able to return to her,” Jude says, watching my father. “You can’t do what you want to do, what you need to do, so you may as well tell us where she is.”
“What makes you thinks she’s not already dead?” My father finds me the second I enter the room.
“Is she?” Jude asks.
Maxwell’s eyes glimmer with excitement, a smile twitching his lips. “I already told you,” he says to Jude, not taking his eyes off of me, “I don’t know where the girl is.”
Jude raps his knuckles against the table, drawing Maxwell’s attention away from me. “I think you do.”
Maxwell shrugs. The cuffs rattle against the back of the chair. “Do you have a picture? Maybe it will help jog my memory.”
“No,” Eli states, his voice hard.
River steps forward and plants his hands on the table. “You know exactly who Layla is. You’ve spent the last two weeks hunting right next to our families, you expect us to believe you didn’t do your research?”
Maxwell blinks, the action slow. Unnatural.
My stomach twists. The look in his eyes right now, half empty, half alive on the thrill of it, is the look he gets before he kills. He blinks again and it’s gone.
“Let me talk to my daughter. I’ll tell her everything,” he says like this is a business deal and he’s being perfectly reasonable.
I reach for the knife at my waist, fingers tightening around it. “I’m right here.”
Maxwell hangs his head and chuckles. “Alone,” he says before looking back up at me. “We’re long overdue some daddy-daughter time, don’t you think?”
Jude shakes his head. “Yeah, that’s not how this works.”
My dad shrugs again but his eyes glimmer. “Layla…” He cocks his head to the side. “She sounds young.”
A clicking sound fills the kitchen and I’m pretty sure Eli just cocked his gun. I glance over at him. The weapon’s still pointed at the tiles but his finger rests on the trigger. This isn’t working. We’re not going to get anywhere if Eli kills my dad before he can tell us where Layla is.
I turn to River. “Go,” I say.
His jaw hardens.
I tap my fingers against my knife. “I’ll be fine.”
River’s nostrils flare but he nods at Eli and Jude. The three of them leave the room, Jude trailing his fingers against mine as he passes.
I step forward and grip the back of the chair Jude just vacated.
“Sit down. Relax,” my father says, a dark brow twitching in amusement.
I want to keep standing just to spite him, but I do as he says because I need him to feel in control right now. I fold my hands together on top of the wooden table and stare him down.
The work he’s had done on his face is still jarring. The rounder cheeks soften him, make him look less serial killer and more next-door-neighbor-mowing-the-lawn. But I guess he always looked like that to everyone else. Neat brown hair, checked shirt. Only my sister and I and his victims saw the monster he was hiding.
When I refuse to say anything to break the silence he lets out a low chuckle. “I always thought you were the one most like me. It’s nice to be reminded I was right.”
I am nothing like my father. He’s baiting me and I wait him out. All I need to do at the moment is keep him talking.
“A profiler for the FBI.” He whistles and his brows dig down. “Would it be strange to say I’m proud of you?”
He runs his tongue along his teeth at my continued silence, only half trying to hold back his smile. “You know people. Understand them. That’s where I went wrong with your sister. She could never blend in, never fool the rest of them but you…” He jerks his chin to the door. “You’ve got them all fooled, haven’t you?” He leans forward, pressing his chest against the edge of the table. “Tell me, how badly do you want to shove that knife in my chest right now?”
“Layla is young,” I say finally, my mind seeing past the initial rage at his earlier words and putting together puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. “Too young for you. You could have taken her the first time you were in Danville, but you went after Adelaide instead. You don’t want Layla dead.”
Maxwell settles back in his chair, far too relaxed for a man in cuffs. “I don’t want Layla at all.”
“No. You don’t,” I say as it dawns on me. “Whoever you’re working with does.” We’d already figured out Maxwell has a partner. Currently all roads point to Farrah but my mind flicks back to the first time I met River. At the talk he gave in Quantico, when I suggested Maxwell had a partner, his answer was that Maxwell’s need for control would make a partnership impossible. The thing is, he wasn’t wrong. My father didn’t have partners, he had protégés. He had me and Angelica.
Angelica wouldn’t have been able to break herself out of the psychiatric unit and I know in my gut, as unstable as she is, she wouldn’t have beaten Josh like that. But we were right about Maxwell never leaving L.A., so it wasn’t him either.
That leaves Farrah, which still doesn’t sit right. She’s the Chief of the SCU. A strong, powerful woman. She is everything my father despises, and I don’t believe for a second he could manipulate her.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and my gut clenches as it hits me. The unknown number. I thought it was my sister and then I thought it was my father. But my father was never in that warehouse and right now, he’s sitting in front of me with his hands cuffed behind his back.
The air feels thin as I breathe through parted lips.
“Look at that mind of yours.” Maxwell grins. “You get that from me.”
I meet his eyes, dark brown lit up with morbid excitement. “You never called me ‘Little Star’,” I say.
He shakes his head, slow and steady. “No. I didn’t.”
I swallow, my mouth dry and my heart palpitating. I take my phone out of my pocket and look at the message.
Unknown: Figured it out yet, Little Star?
The phone vibrates as another message comes through. A photo of Layla from the waist up, a young man’s hand stretched across her bare stomach.
My vision blurs, the nightmare that’s been haunting me taking over.
“Naughty, naughty,” he taunts. “Eavesdropping is bad.”
A hand grabs my ponytail, and I scream as I’m pulled back.
My hip hits the hard floor and I claw at the hand dragging me, my fluffy socks trying to find purchase against the wood.
“Shh, shh,” he says, letting go of my hair and lifting me up around the waist. “You’re okay, we’re just going to play a game.”
I sob over his arm as he carries me into my bedroom. My body knows this game and it doesn’t want to play.
I’m placed on the small twin bed Allie and I take turns sleeping in. The mattress sinks as he climbs on top of me but my eyes are squeezed shut.
His warm breath presses against my cheek, and I flinch away. He smells like chocolate milk. “Wakey, wakey Little Star, let me see those pretty green eyes.”
I keep them shut tight but then his hand settles on my stomach, under my pajama top, and my eyes snap open.
The boy grins down at me and I want to cry for being so stupid. I should have stayed in my room. Whenever the woman in the kitchen comes, he’s always with her.
I stare at him through watery eyes trying to get up the courage to push him away, even though I know it won’t work.
He’s older than I am, only by a few years, but it’s enough that he’s too strong for me to fight. I tried that the time before and the time before that.
It didn’t work.
So, I lie there and close my eyes again as he starts to play.
I stumble back from the table, my chair crashing against the refrigerator as the flashback disappears and I’m left staring at my father.
He lifts a shoulder. “I tried to stop him.”
Like fuck he did.
Every inch of my skin crawls. My hands tremble and I think I’m going to be sick, but I can’t break right now. Not when Layla needs us.
I stagger over to the hallway and brace myself in the door frame. My chair crashing must have brought the guys running because they’re all standing in the corridor. It’s not them I’m looking for though. I find my mother standing between Oz and Eli.
My throat is thick, my chest pulsing. Part of me doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want to make it real. But I don’t have the luxury of blocking this out anymore.
I look my mother in the eyes and ask the damn question. “Do I have a brother?”
I think she knew what I was going to ask before I did. Regret seeps from her like it’s a living thing but I don’t have the capacity for anybody else’s emotions right now.
I stand like stone, waiting for her answer.
“Yes,” she says.
A low keen claws out of me. I double over, too out of it to hear the scuffle behind me until I’m wrenched back with a thick arm around waist.
All four of the guys raise their guns but my father’s too fast. He has my knife out of my jeans and up against my throat in an instant, the handcuffs dangling from his wrist.
The guys freeze.
My father tuts. “Who do you think taught her to pick a lock, boys?”
“Let her go,” River orders.
“What was it you said, ‘that’s not how this works?’” Maxwell throws Jude’s words back at him.
I can physically feel him feeding off the power, his chest expanding against my back. This man has haunted my nightmares for my entire life. I didn’t think there was anything worse than him, but I was so fucking wrong.
He is a little, small man who failed to do the one thing a father should—protect his child.
I shift my head to look at Eli. The blade knicks my skin but I’ve got too much adrenaline right now to feel the pain.
Eli’s knuckles are white against the black pistol. Stone coats his face but panic flares under the surface. His gun is trained on Maxwell, but his eyes are on me.
We still don’t know where Layla is, but I don’t think Maxwell does either and every second we spend in this standoff is a second we could be looking for her. For my brother .
I know what Eli needs. I know what I need. So, I hold Eli’s gaze and take the biggest gamble of my life.
I nod.
Eli takes the shot.